Rhino Shield Protects Smartphones Way Better than Gorilla Glass Alone

Despite the fact that Gorilla Glass is supposed to be extremely durable, I can speak from experience that it can still shatter quite easily. In fact, the only time I ever dropped my iPhone 4 – about 2 feet – it completely shattered the screen and I had to buy a new phone. As Corning continues to improve their impact resistance with Gorilla Glass 3, a startup has a different sort of screen protection in mind.

The engineers at Cambridge, England’s Evolutive Labs have come up with a screen protector called Rhino Shield, which is expected to offer impressive shatter-resistance properties. By combining multiple protective layers with unique properties, they claim to have developed an incredibly durable screen protector for smartphones.

By adding “impact dispersion” and “impact damping” layers to their screen protector, they’re able to add a tremendous amount of protection in front of your gadget’s precious glass screen. Incredibly, all of these layers combine to be just 0.029cm thick, and will not impact screen sensitivity to your touch. The screen protector is easily installed with the included applicator, and can be removed without leaving a sticky residue. That all sounds good, but the proof is in the pudding – and the Rhino Shield doesn’t disappoint in the demo video below:

Wow. That was impressive – especially the part where they drop the steel ball bearing onto the unprotected and protected sheet of Gorilla Glass.

The Rhino Shield is currently raising funds for production over on Kickstarter, where a pledge of £12 (~$19 USD) will get you one for many of the most popular touchscreen phones, including the iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, Galaxy SIII, Nexus 4, and HTC One X+. They’re also working on versions for the iPad Mini, Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, iPad and other tablets, with prices ranging from £16 to £20 (~25 to $31 USD). Delivery is expected to begin this April.